Outline notes for my CastleFanFic
A/N This is my first fanfic dive, so be gentle please mates! First off Castle is by far my favourite show on TV and thought I had to get a couple ideas that were killing me onto the page along with everyone else's brilliant work.
First off, I was always a bit tossed off that this guy unrelentingly always comes back to Beckett, like she's the flame and he's the moth, so once 5X24 spoilers and Watershed became closer, I spit-balled my ideas, bit of research, and personal experiences into this fic of what could happen. I picked a few random ideas from other great fanfics out there and of course from Marlowe's brilliant source work. So here we go, my take on Castle vs. Indiana Jones vs. Bad Holiday vs. the World! Enjoy! Very AU, spoilers through 5X24.
A Lost Castle in the Golden Triangle
Chapter 1 – 12th Precinct, DC, Leningrad, and Where?
Beckett sat at her desk in the 12th Precinct bullpen early on a Monday morning. She keeps toying with the idea of this massive opportunity, in the never ending battle between the heart and mind. Why not just jump for it like her "old" gut would tell her to? What could an interview hurt if she knows her heart is in NYC anyway right? It's an opportunity to do more. Of course she knew why she couldn't just pull the proverbial trigger.
Her whole life was here; this crazy new family that she has grown into, opened up to, and dropped her ever present walls to. Not to mention the maddening, egotistical man that showered her with love, and showed her that this fun, dynamic, interesting, challenging group of people are indeed, a real family. Even if this AG job offer was a long shot, she has to tell him before the interview. He deserves that and more, no more secrets. Not after what almost happened last year between them. Another secret like that could create a rift between them that they couldn't circumvent.
She hears the elevator ding and in no time at all, before she can even look up from her paperwork accumulated across her desk, a coffee cup appears next to her writing hand. He gives her his always funny, warming, and all encompassing smirk with a "Good Morning Detective Beckett, ah another morning of droll paperwork..If nothing happens soon I'll leave you with all this fun while I track down the boys for a game of eat the mystery food in the break room! 100 Points if you survive till lunch!... What? Beckett..Kate, what's going on?" He sees the look in her eyes as soon as she looks up from her desk. It's now or never. Her knees began to shake but held her reserve and time to let the chips fall where they may. She promised not to hurt him with this, but she can already tell she's hurt them both.
"Castle, we need to talk..."
PAGE BREAK
He tried to process. He even went through a bizarre fast-forward of the five stages of grief, right there in the precent bullpen.
Denial - I'm fine with this, she'll never take the job look! What we have together. Are whole lives are here
Anger - Why didn't you tell me earlier! I asked you specifically about what that Fed Spook wanted, you said nothing, and all of a sudden you're off to DC?
Bargaining - Well if you absolutely had to, I'd go with you to a city I don't know (or care for) without any of our friends or family, we could make it work, right?
That's when he started to short-circuit. Castle gave up bargaining in mid sentence, took a giant depression pill, and looked her dead in the eye. "You said it best Beckett, just a little ways back 'Just do what you want to do, you always have anyways'"
With that, she saw all the fight leave his eyes and she knew right then, what this really meant. How bad she hurt him. Even with her thoughts of late, her own thinking Castle was getting complacent with her, Vaughn's seeds of doubt that she let creep into her subconscious, and culminating with the Attorney General's offer from Agent Stack. All that doubt was swept away with one look into his eyes, those blue eyes she knew so well...
"Castle...I"
"No Kate, I know where this is going, and it's not where I thought we would be headed...After all this time, I thought you meant it like I did, all those times I said it, I KNOW I meant it. Always"
With that he turned his back and stormed out of the 12th Precinct. Under the view and shocked gaze of every Detective and Uniform across the entire homicide bullpen Castle resigned himself to the greatest loss of his life. Once the elevator doors shut, everyone's eyes immediately shifted to Beckett. It was like watching the life drain out of a victim on the street. As everyone saw the pain on her face, social (and for that matter cop black and blue) decorum made most gazes shift slowly away, back to the benign and boring paperwork of a typical Monday morning shift. The exception being Detective Esposito, who came in early for once to chase a dodgy lead, immediately came to Beckett's side.
"Hey you alright in there chica?" Espo gently touching her shoulder as she sank back into her desk chair, her face almost a blank stare into space. After she brushed off Espo's grip she lowered her head into her hands, ruffled her already distressed caramel brown locks and had her first true tears of pain roll down her face into her desk blotter. Her slow gentle sobs drawing Espo into the only action he could think of...calling for backup. He grabbed his mobile and hit speed dial 2 "Lanie, we got a problem up here, and I need you in the squad room ASAP...I don't know what to do. Yeah, Ryan's my next call."
45 minutes later nothing had changed except three of Beckett's closest friends gathered around her desk. Dr. Lanie Parrish knocked on her tabletop forcefully to get a rise out of Detective Beckett. "Wakeup baby, we need to talk."
Espo, Ryan, and Lanie watched under close eye as Kate shaked off the tears, stood slowly and composed herself. She followed her best girlfriend's motion to head for the Captain's office. "Where is Gates?" she said in a mix of additional horror and shock. Lanie just nodded while Ryan said "Yeah, she is taking a long lunch, wants to let yo..er us have a bit of space for the afternoon". After Captain "Iron" Gate's admitted that any detective worth her salt would know about the Castle/Beckett conundrum, and allowed a quiet acquiescence to the relationship everyone knew about forever, she often went out of her way to support the happy couple, as long as she could maintain plausible deniability. She and Detective Beckett's close knit friends determined the loaner of the office and a few personal days fit that bill easily. Lanie sat Kate down; Espo shut the captain's door and closed the blinds, while they sat around her desk. Dr. Parrish had to break the dam as simply as possible "Alright Kate, we know something's been a little weird between you two for a week or two, but what the hell happened today?"
Kate met her friends eyes and literally ripped through everything in as few words as possible, the job offer, her mixed feelings, Vaughn kissing her, Castle walking out on her, everything. Five minutes later she finally came to the end of her burble, and gasped for air. She looked around at her team, slowly regaining her breathing and looking into their faces for looks of understanding, or worse, hatred.
Lanie nodded slowly, "Alright girl, we could all go round and round this table about the mistakes you've made, the crazy mistakes Castle made, hell the mistakes we all made. But we all know here, you to idiots love each other more than I can say in this lunchroom. So the way I see it, you've been wasting time pouting here...get off your butt and hustle like the Detective Kate Beckett I know, and get your damn man back!"
Telling Lanie and the boys everything seemed to calm Kate down tremendously. She didn't know how, or what she'd say, or do, but she knew she had to see Castle, and see him right now! All the things she left unsaid for the past five years seemed to curdle inside her heart, forcing her to stand up, gather her strength, and make this right. She swiftly grabbed her blue button down jacket and raced across town to their loft and tried to stop her future from slipping away.
She was so flustered and nervous; she almost knocked instead of just using her key. Without thinking, her shaking hands loosed the rattling keys, trying to fit them in the deadbolt and fight off another fresh wave of tears. Prompted by the sound of the keys the door flew open and Kate's breath caught in her throat. It wasn't her one and done, but Alexis with tears mirroring her own.
"Detective Beckett? What happened? What the hell did you do?"
"Alexis...I...where?"
"He's gone! He left awhile ago...and I have no idea where he's going!"
"What? What do you mean gone? How long ago? What did he say?" Her hazel eyes darted around the loft for any sign of quick clues, trying to delay her own shock.
Alexi's eyes sobered and almost grew cold as she responded, "He came home and I wanted to surprise him for lunch, but then I saw the shattered look on his face and I knew something was wrong. Before I could even say anything he locked himself in his office. When he came out 20 or so minutes later he had a backpack over his shoulder and had changed to something looking like safari outdoor wear on. I barely had time to ask what was up when he said 'Alexis I need to get away for awhile, don't worry, I'll contact you soon.' I asked him where he was going and he mumbled something about Leningrad.
That city isn't even named that anymore! I panicked and tried the only thing I could think of, to stall. I stopped him by telling him he needed warmer clothes. And then he said 'Well maybe not Russia then, full of crazed ex-Commies anyway, maybe Johannesburg, warmer anyways.' What the hell is happening to my Dad Detective?"
Kate couldn't face Alexis, not yet, not with so many questions floating through her own mind, like a sea of pain. She put on her detectives' work face and went to his desk to look for any clues to what the lunatic love of her life was up to. His mobile phone was on the desk blotter, left behind and switched off, she had never once seen him without it, even when one of the fifty or so other phones that had been destroyed in his shadow work with the NYPD, he always had a replacement ASAP. He left his laptop as well, another nerve wracking observation. She turned on his phone and checked that his last call was to SoHo Travel & Flight Centre. As this became realer and clearer in her mind's eye, she ran across the office to his hidden safe, nestled in the bookshelf behind his Nikki Heat collection. His passport and all of his emergency cash on hand (last she checked around 150,000 USD's and 25,000 GBP) were gone. She spoke quietly to herself "What have I done?" Her fear slowly turned to a low simmering rage, "Damn it Castle, you're not escaping this that easily". She turned to Alexis and before she could breakdown herself and said "Alexis, it's too much to go into now, but I hurt your father. You can blame me as much as you want but right now I have to find him, before there is no going back."
Her voice dripped like icicles, colder than she had ever heard the beautiful young redhead's voice before, "He's all I have Detective Beckett, he's all that I've got. I can't see him get his heart broken again. After you got shot I asked him about what this was and I could just see in his eyes how much he loved you. I asked him if you made him happy and if it was enough, and I knew before I even got the words out that both were true. If this is what I think it is, and I've lost even a piece of him, I'll never forgive you and never want to see you again. Oh by the way I think that box in his drawer was for you" With the last of the fresh venom spilled out, Alexis turned and walked out of the loft, and possibly out of Kate's life.
As if she could survive another hammer blow like that to her chest, she opened the Pandora's Box of a desk drawer and saw the small light blue jewellery box. As the implication drew across her face, Kate picked up the box held it close to her heart and cried for the umpteenth time today. What the hell was she thinking? Her frustration, shame, fears, love, and strength of will all collided together in a battle between her heart and mind. "Alright Mr. Castle, this isn't over. Where the hell are you?" and with that, she whipped away the drying tears, and went to work.
Whew a long chapter, but a lot to setup...next chapter is (mostly) all Castle as he loses himself in Southeast Asia. He may find something, but is it what he was looking for? Stay tuned mates!
